Project Activities > Transnational Access

MICROKELVIN offers European scientists transnational access to 3 ultra-low temperature laboratories in Helsinki,
Finland, Grenoble, France and in Lancaster, UK. For the period from 1st of April, 2009, through
30th of September, 2013, the 3 sites provide opportunities to research teams from European Member or Associated States
to conduct their experiments below 4 K temperatures down to the microkelvin regime.

Access is offered free of charge and granted on the basis of proposals which will be reviewed by the MICROKELVIN
Selection Panel.

MICROKELVIN offers scientists and engineers an opportunity to conduct their ultra-low temperature research and development work in e.g. cryoengineering, material science, metrology, nanoelectronics and physics.

Access to the MICROKELVIN infrastructures is offered free of charge to European research teams. MICROKELVIN will reimburse the access cost to the host research infrastructures. The support to users includes:

To be eligible, a research team must satisfy the following conditions:

The project group leader and the majority of research team members must come from an EU member, associated state, or candidate state. (Information about eligible countries outside the EU can be found on the Cordis website.)

The requested access must be transnational (i.e., the home institution of the user must be located in a country other than the country where the infrastructure is established).

The users must agree that any publication resulting from work carried out under the MICROKELVIN TA activity must acknowledge the support of the European Community — Research Infrastructures under the FP7 Capacities Specific Programme, MICROKELVIN project number 228464.

Incoming proposals will be verified by the MICROKELVIN Management Office for formal compliance with the EU regulations and MICROKELVIN conditions.

The proposal will also be examined by the access provider for the necessity/feasibility for the use of the facility. The access provider shall not unreasonably withhold its agreement to such request.

The Management Office will forward the proposal to the MICROKELVIN Selection Panel. The Selection Panel will judge the scientific content of the project and rank the proposals according to defined selection criteria. The final decision will be reported to the MICROKELVIN Management Office who will notify the applicant and the access provider of the decision of the Selection Panel.

The TA applications are evaluated and the users selected by the MICROKELVIN Selection Panel which is common for all three access-giving sites. The Selection Panel is composed of 9 international experts representing both MICROKELVIN partners and outside organizations. MICROKELVIN will encourage efforts of fundamental importance demanding greater investment in hardware and manpower than is possible for a typical academic research group.

The following selection criteria will be used:

The accepted experiments have to represent excellent science with unique goals.

They have to be technically feasible for the available instruments in our facilities.

Scientific and technical progress is expected.

Preference is given to first time users from countries lacking low temperature facility.

Special attention will be paid to new EU-countries, and young scientists and their training and mobility.

It is important to notice that priority will be given to new users, i.e., researchers who have not previously used the infrastructure and who would not normally have access to it. Evaluation will also include the possible training benefit to young researchers and the expertise of the user group in the research field.

In case the TA proposal is accepted, the Management Office will inform the access provider who will make a final decision concerning the quantity of access provided to the user group. The applicant will have to contact the host institution about the further procedure for organizing the access to the infrastructure.

The project leader of the user group will be requested to provide the following documents to the MICROKELVIN Management Office as soon as the experiments come to an end:

Furthermore, an online questionnaire must be filled in for the Commission to allow to evaluate the Research Infrastructures' action and to improve the services provided to the scientific community.

Users are expected to publish their results within a reasonable time in the open literature. The users must agree that any publication resulting from work carried out under the MICROKELVIN TA activity must acknowledge the support of the European Community — Research Infrastructures under the FP7 Capacities Specific Programme, MICROKELVIN project number 228464.